I short while ago I attempted to put vsftpd on my My Book WEII. So I opened the inittab file to add the line "ftp stream tcp nowait root /opt/sbin/vsftpd /opt/etc/vsftpd.conf" to the very end of the inittab file, shut down the My Book, then turned it back on and there was no lights or fan and I also could not access my My Book in anyway. So I tried hooking the drives to my PC so that I could edit the inittab file to remove the line that I added to the bottom of it. I was able to read the file so that I could edit it but when I tried to transfer the file without the line that I added earlier a message popped up saying that the disk is write-protected. So what I was wondering is that if their is anyway for me to make the disk writable so I can transfer the inittab file back over I would really appriciate it if someone can tell me how. Or if their is another way of fixing that file so that I do not have to delete any of my documents, pitures, etc. Thanks.

[[toc]]I am running Windows Vista Home Premium, but if I need to use linux please tell me which Linux OS to use. I am not sure how to set the directory to write, all I did was plug the drives into my PC and it says that the 2.8 GB drive is read-only.

You should download a Live CD of your favourite distribution. For example Ubuntu's install disc doubles a Live environment, meaning that the operating system can be run from the CD without needing to install it.

Once the drive is mounted in linux you should be able to edit a file although you may need to login as the root user to gain the correct permissions.

I was not aware that Windows could read a ext3 formatted drive, but I have heard there are drivers that may allow you to write to the drive from within windows.

I now have the My Book drive mounted, and when I edit the file and try to overwrite the old one it says "You do not have the permissions necessary to save the file." So now I am needing too know how to set my permissions so that I can write. I tried going to users and groups and made the username "root" and the password "mypassword" but it still did not give me write permissions. Can you tell me what I am doing wrong here?

I just got rid of the line that I put in earlier that bricked my My Book and I put the 2 drives back in and still their was nothing. If you have any idea what could be causing the problem can you please tell me. When I edited the inittab file I only had drive A in my PC.

Once I edited the file and copied it back over I just unplugged the drive and plugged it back into the drive bay in the My Book without unmounting. I just remounted them on my Linux PC and then unmounted it but still no response when plugged into the My Book.

You should only need to restore the files from sda1 and sda3 to have a mint condition MBWE.

You would restore these by mounting the partition and just extracting and writing over your files in your partition as root. You may need to delete other files you have created that are not in the archive, especially in your init.d.

I have done this on a single drive device, I am not sure how easy it is on a dual drive.

Do you think that the problem I am having with mounting the drives is because the two drives were setup in the My Book to act as one drive? Because here is the message that I am getting now: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda4,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

This could be the case, tbh I'm not so flash on how RAID works or even what type of RAID setup the MBWE uses.

Also the message you are seeing may or may not be related to the drive you are trying to fix. /dev/sda usually refers to the primary sata drive connected to your computer. I suspect that this may actually be your Windows partition on your internal hard disk. In that case it is unlikely that /dev/sda4 (a fourth partition on this device) exists.

Sorry I can't be more help, this drive has been a massive Linux learning curve for me too. Hope you get it sorted.

Now I just mounted drive b and I see all of my network shares but I cannot access them. The only one I can access is the PUBLIC folder which does not help me because I have no files stored in there. How do I access my file shares from my PC?

When you say you cannot access them what do you mean? The "shares" are just folders, they may be owned by different people and have different permissions than PUBLIC.

If you are using a terminal try using su to get root privileges (remember they are owned by a different user from your MBWE, so only root may have access to them in another linux environment). You should then be be able to cd into the folders.

If you are using a gui I would need to know what OS you are using to advise you further.

I've just read this article and had to register to participate… exactly what I was looking for!

Well, I guess I can't help here, instead I've got the same problem - I bought an empty MyBook World Edition II housing with no harddrives for a few Euros, bought 2 fresh WD5000AAJA drives and am stuck…

As I read from this thread one needs either the Source Image from WD and completely recompile the system or (which I'd prefer) a working backup image.
Could anyone provide such an image? The image found on the link above is just for the World Edition I, the system of the World Edition II is rather different
I guess, because of RAID support…

Could someone help me out i modified the inittab file as well and i am having the same problems could someone please direct me to the files for the mybook world edition 1tb in raid 0 config so i can try and get my box working or at least info on how to remove my files from my pooched drive! thank you in advance for any information.